Perfection In Portugal

During the first two weeks of January I spent some quality time in the beautiful country of Portugal, going back for a second visit. However this time, I went for one reason and one wave—the Cave. A gnarly right hand slab that breaks in extremely shallow water over the sharpest rocks you can imagine, people have gotten their backs and knees broken out there. So, I knew I needed a guy who would charge it and not think twice about his body and well being, therefore I decided to hit up Aussie madman Damien “Dom” Wills and within one email he was totally on board. Marti Paradisis was supposed to meet us there too, but something happened last minute and he had to pull the plug. But, nothing was stopping us. That is, the only thing that could which was the wrong swell direction. Sadly, in all our time there the Cave never really did her thing but we did end up scoring all up and down the coast.

I still had a solid crew of great surfers to work with, Gony Zubizarreta and Aritz Aranburu from Spain and Portugal/Germany’s golden son Marlon Lipke. So, in the end I definitely feel that I got the job done. I also had the time of my life in downtown Lisbon nearly losing my mind and getting kidnapped by a cab driver, but that’s a whole other story in and of itself. The central coast of Portugal is so wave rich and abundant with every kind of wave you can imagine. Reef breaks, point breaks, beach breaks, all within a 60km radius you can score something with any condition, if you know where to be and when. Thank God we had Marlon and Gony with us to lead us down the right path every time finding gold at the end of each rainbow. Thanks guys.

So please enjoy my photo gallery of what the central coast of Portugal has to offer, and I am sorry there are no water shots-my housing flooded on the first day barring me for the rest of my journey. I still am having nightmares from the epic SuperTubes sessions that I was condemned to shoot from the beach. Also, f you decide to travel to Portugal after seeing these photos take my one piece of advice and do not fly Iberia airlines. On both my way there and home I was delayed a cumulative total of 16 hours forcing me to go into an extreme anxiety attack that no amount of Xanax could’ve taken care of. All right, that’s enough griping from me…please enjoy Portugal.